Alrighty then, now what?

ziegl027 · 01-21-2010, 01:47 PM

I wasn't completely satisfied with soPDF (although I may try it again to see what some of the options do, couldn't get it to work at all this morning for some reason) to crop white margins. I want them to maintain there normal orientation so that *I* put it into landscape mode on my Touch, so when I make notes the controls are oriented normally. So I decided to ask at work if there were any computers around with Acrobat on them that I could use. Yep. Opened several PDF's (academic multi-column journal articles) and cropped them. One wouldn't let me crop (from a Japanese journal--presumably protected?). The others fine, lovely job of trimming the white margin as displayed on my computer monitor. Did "save as" and put them in a different folder with a different name. Moved them onto my reader. The margins are still displayed, same as they were when I had tried the articles as-is (note, I did remove the orignial copies from the device before moving the new "cropped" ones on).

I am sad--I think if all I do is trim that little white bit, the files will be perfectly readable in landscape with original formatting. You'd think if a free program (soPDF) was pretty close to workable for this task, the Real Thing (Acrobat) would be up for it.....

frabjous · 01-22-2010, 11:30 PM

The Acrobat crop feature is not a "true crop". It just pretends to remove the margins by inserting a command to tell Acrobat and Acrobat Reader to ignore the margins. Other PDF software can't interpret these commands. It's been a frustration of many. (You *can* use Acrobat do crop the margins in a much more complicated way: by selecting the part you want to keep, copying, and pasting as a new page, then deleting the original page. Very tedious process, especially since there no way to do all pages at once, as far as I know...)

With soPDF, to keep it it in portrait orientation and not divide the page, you just need to use one of the Fit Height or Fit Width options rahter than "Fix 2x..." options, as I mentioned in the other thread.

You might also try some of the other PDF cropping tools out there. Calibre comes with a command line tool called pdfmanipulate that can crop PDF margins. (It may be accessible through the GUI; not sure.) The LaTeX bundle comes with one called pdfcrop. For a more radical solution, take a look at PaperCrop.

Elfwreck · 01-23-2010, 12:15 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by frabjous

(You *can* use Acrobat do crop the margins in a much more complicated way: by selecting the part you want to keep, copying, and pasting as a new page, then deleting the original page. Very tedious process, especially since there no way to do all pages at once, as far as I know...)

You can crop, then print to PDF with a new page size, but it's a bit of a hassle, and (sometimes?) switches to image instead of text.

ziegl027 · 01-23-2010, 11:46 AM

Well, glad I didn't pay for the stupid program if it can't easily do the SIMPLE task I want it to

01-21-2010, 01:47 PM	#1
ziegl027 Addict Posts: 264 Karma: 764 Join Date: Jun 2009 Location: Minnesota Device: Sony Touch, Kindle DXG	Alrighty then, now what? I wasn't completely satisfied with soPDF (although I may try it again to see what some of the options do, couldn't get it to work at all this morning for some reason) to crop white margins. I want them to maintain there normal orientation so that I put it into landscape mode on my Touch, so when I make notes the controls are oriented normally. So I decided to ask at work if there were any computers around with Acrobat on them that I could use. Yep. Opened several PDF's (academic multi-column journal articles) and cropped them. One wouldn't let me crop (from a Japanese journal--presumably protected?). The others fine, lovely job of trimming the white margin as displayed on my computer monitor. Did "save as" and put them in a different folder with a different name. Moved them onto my reader. The margins are still displayed, same as they were when I had tried the articles as-is (note, I did remove the orignial copies from the device before moving the new "cropped" ones on). I am sad--I think if all I do is trim that little white bit, the files will be perfectly readable in landscape with original formatting. You'd think if a free program (soPDF) was pretty close to workable for this task, the Real Thing (Acrobat) would be up for it.....

01-22-2010, 11:30 PM	#2
frabjous Wizard Posts: 1,213 Karma: 12890 Join Date: Feb 2009 Location: Amherst, Massachusetts, USA Device: Sony PRS-505	The Acrobat crop feature is not a "true crop". It just pretends to remove the margins by inserting a command to tell Acrobat and Acrobat Reader to ignore the margins. Other PDF software can't interpret these commands. It's been a frustration of many. (You can use Acrobat do crop the margins in a much more complicated way: by selecting the part you want to keep, copying, and pasting as a new page, then deleting the original page. Very tedious process, especially since there no way to do all pages at once, as far as I know...) With soPDF, to keep it it in portrait orientation and not divide the page, you just need to use one of the Fit Height or Fit Width options rahter than "Fix 2x..." options, as I mentioned in the other thread. You might also try some of the other PDF cropping tools out there. Calibre comes with a command line tool called pdfmanipulate that can crop PDF margins. (It may be accessible through the GUI; not sure.) The LaTeX bundle comes with one called pdfcrop. For a more radical solution, take a look at PaperCrop. Last edited by frabjous; 01-22-2010 at 11:33 PM.

01-23-2010, 11:46 AM	#4
ziegl027 Addict Posts: 264 Karma: 764 Join Date: Jun 2009 Location: Minnesota Device: Sony Touch, Kindle DXG	Well, glad I didn't pay for the stupid program if it can't easily do the SIMPLE task I want it to

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